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Unlike the straw man, which involves a distortion of the other party's position, [4] the red herring is a seemingly plausible, though ultimately irrelevant, diversionary tactic. [5] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a red herring may be intentional or unintentional; it is not necessarily a conscious intent to mislead. [1]
In the first [3] and second [4] editions of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage Fowler uses the heading false scent to explain writing that causes the reader to second-guess: because the writer knows what is coming ahead, he may forget that his reader does not, and unwittingly "lay false scent" by writing something ambiguous that can only be disambiguated later in the text (for example "I ...
Red herring Presenting data or issues that, while compelling, are irrelevant to the argument at hand, and then claiming that it validates the argument. [citation needed] In 1807, William Cobbett wrote how he used red herrings to lay a false trail, while training hunting dogs—an apocryphal story that was probably the origin of the idiom ...
A red herring is a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question. Red herring may also refer to:
Persuasive definition – purporting to use the "true" or "commonly accepted" meaning of a term while, in reality, using an uncommon or altered definition. (cf. the if-by-whiskey fallacy) Ecological fallacy – inferring about the nature of an entity based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which that entity belongs.
A study published in BMJ Global Health suggests that replacing red meat with small fish like herring, sardines and anchovies could save up to 750,000 lives annually by 2050 and reduce disability ...
The power of emotions to influence judgment, including political attitudes, has been recognized since classical antiquity. Aristotle, in his treatise Rhetoric, described emotional arousal as critical to persuasion, "The orator persuades by means of his hearers, when they are roused to emotion by his speech; for the judgments we deliver are not the same when we are influenced by joy or sorrow ...
The English (UK) idiom [to be] "stitched (or "done") up like a kipper" is commonly used to describe a situation where a person has (depending on context) been "fitted up" or "framed"; "used", unfairly treated or betrayed; or cheated out of something, with no possibility of correcting the "wrong" done.